Victory Review 5/1-5/8 - Some Neg/Spa/LONG

[LegalCat]

Well, after taking more than half a dozen cruises on Carnival plus some on RCCL etc, I have to say, this is the first cruise where I really didn't have a great experience. As we all know, reviews have to be taken with a grain of salt. Just because I had some negative experiences doesn't mean the next person will and I'm sure a lot of our fellow CCers enjoyed this cruise. I'm going to try to do this by sections rather than days because I have a few specific items I want to deal with.

 

Embarkation - I found this to be pretty easy. There were a LOT of lines and a lot of people, however, we went probably at pretty much prime time. We arrived at the port at 12:15. The lines were long but moved continuously because they had them really stretched out. I think thats a pretty smart idea because you feel like your always moving and its not as bad as standing still for the same amount of time.

 

We carried ALL our luggage on which was no problem for us, those of you who know me know thats just what we do. We brought one duffel bag each and one garment bag. We brought one bottle of tequilla and one bottle of mixer, one in each bag. For some reason the XRay did pick up the mixer and they took it out of the bag and inspected it, once we explained the mixer was non alcoholic, they shrugged and gave it back. They never looked in the second bag.

 

The fun pass line was longer than the 'regular' line but it moved smoothly. All we had to do at the desk was sign the credit card authorization. Then there was waiting for the sign and sail card, waiting for the photos, and then waiting to get on the ship. We were IN our room by 1:00 so it took us less than 45 minutes. Our room was ready when we got there so we were able to unpack before heading out to get lunch. The room was nice, balcony cabin on the verandah deck. We also had the nice white comfy bedding. I found the bed to be slightly hard, but was otherwise pretty comfy. The A/C was pretty chilly and we turned it down lower several times. We never ever ever saw our steward throughout the entire cruise, not once. We did leave him an extra $20 in addition to the prepaid because he did a great job with our cabin. We keep it generally clean but we always had fresh towels and lots of ice and clean glasses etc and we had great towel animals every night except the first and last, although I'm not entirely sure what they all were, lol.

 

The first thing we did was go to the dining room to find our table. At 2:00 pm the tables did not have numbers and there wasnt a single soul in the dining room at that time so we eventually gave up. We were given the 5:45 dinner in the Pacific Dining Room, table 137. I will deal with dinner now rather than breaking it up by days. We were at a table for 8. Two couples came the first night in addition to us. One was a married couple who were super nice but we never saw them again until the last night. And the other couple who appeared to be a mother son couple (or he likes them much older, lol we were never sure). They sat at the other end of the table and there was pretty much zero communication between us and them. We only saw them maybe 3 nights total and those nights they generally came pretty late. So, we ended up with a table for 8, basically just for the two of us. We had heard the ship was sold out, but there were plenty of tables that seemed to be missing couples. On the good end, we were right at the back and sicne we were the only peopel at the table on most nights we took the first two seats which were up against the back window.

 

Our head waiter or main waiters name was Philbert. He was professional and did his job but didnt go out of his way at all. On the first night he gave a completely scripted canned talk about himself and what he would be doing for us every night, but while he was talking he was staring off across the dining room and never once looked at us or made any attempt to make eye contact etc. It was actually kind of amusing and I had a good giggle about it after he left. There were two other people assisting him, a girl and a guy who never were introduced and I never saw their name tags so I dont know their names. I know how hard it must be to do that job, I don't know how they remember your name or remember your preferences etc. I don't really expect them to. HOWEVER, on every other cruise we have had we found that the servers remembered our names after the second day AND generally always remembered our preferences. Same with the bar staff who worked during dinner. On this cruise, we never got into enough conversation with the dinner staff to even tell them our names. I asked for lemon with my water every single night and it was always kind of treated like a weird request, not one single night was the lemon brought without me having to flag a server down and ask for it. Also every single night BOTH of the assistant waiters would come by and ask us if we wanted coffee. That kind of got amusing as well. A lot of the time I had to request water refills. The servers seemed to be pretty distracted socializing with the 8 and 10 people tables which were full and surrounded us. Also several of the tables had small children and the servers spent a lot of time playing with them. That being said, they did exactly their job but made absolutely no effort to go above and beyond.

 

The food in the dining room for dinner was good but not fantastic. We did dinner in the dining room every single night because we were so exhausted from the day we just wanted to sit and have food brought to us, lol. I'm a slightly picky eater, I dont eat seafood etc. There were several nights where there wasn't a single appetizer I would eat and so I skipped it. I had lamb on the first night and it was tiny (bone in and the bone took up almost half of the single chop), I would definately recommend getting two of those if you like lamb. But then on the second night we had prime rib and it was a good sized piece. On the last night we had turkey and I found that actually to be a bit tough, I sent it back and got beef tenderloin instead. On several nights where they had two seafood dishes my husband got both and combined them which made a nice meal.

 

We had the same bar server every single night and not once did she remember what I drank even tho I had the exact same drink every night. THREE times she charged our drinks to the wrong person. The first night I didnt realize until after she left. I had checked the drinks on the tab but didnt realize it had some one elses name on it until after I signed and she left. We werent able to find her again and the waiters told us "dont worry about it, you can see her another night". So we took our copy of the receipt to a woman at the maitre'd counter at the entance and she held on to it. The charge never showed up on our bill. Also on two more occasions the tab was put on the wrong persons account. We had to point this out each time. The folio number was just wrong even though they kept looking at my card. Each time I had to point it out the server kind of looked at me like I was trying to make their life harder. We kept a really close eye on our account to make sure the same thing didn't happen to us.

 

Meals up on deck were standard. We found the lines to be really long in the front next to the pool, I think a lot of people don't realize at the start that you could go into the meditteranean dining room and there was a bigger buffet line in there etc so the lines inside were some times empty. Some times the lines were huge and some times there were no lines at all so its all in the timing. The lines moved along pretty well. There was generally a good selection and when they had beef on the carving station it was always excellent. The burgers at the back grill were always great. We never had any pizza. My husband had lots of smoked salmon from the deli. We also had one meal from the chinese food area and that was pretty good too.

 

We didnt bring any kids on this cruise so we did not experience Camp Carnival at all.

 

We also managed to go to NONE of the shows. We missed the two main shows and also we never made it to any of the midnight shows which we always wanted to but just never made it to. We heard they were good. I wish they would have put the midnight comedy shows on the funvision, but I guess since it was rated "R" they couldnt. We also did not attend any of the talks, the shopping talk etc.

 

OK lets see, Im sorry this is long, I just wanna include everything I can think of.

 

SPA - One thing we said we were definately doing was a couples massage. Since I know this generally books up fast, I wanted to book right away. I wanted to get a couples massage, and maybe a manicure and pedicure. I went to the spa at around 3 or 4 PM on the first day before we set sail. I *specifically* said that I wanted to book the couples massage on a port day to get the discount. The receptionist *specifically* told me that Carnival did NOT NOT NOT give discounts on the couples massage because its a specialty service. I asked multiple times because I know from past experience that discounts ARE given on port days. She assured me that this was no longer the case with couples massage. She also said the ONLY two available appointments were that same day (Sunday) at 8:30 PM or the next day (Monday) at 8 AM. Also she said the ONLY appointment available for the pedicure was Saturday afternoon?? I took the Monday 8 AM appointment. The price was $250. The massage was pretty good. There was a very hard sell at the end of the massage (while we were still on the table) for the spa products. I told them politely several times that I had no interest in purchasing products and they kept trying, so that was a bit annoying. It was a 50 minute massage.

 

You can imagine my ...surprise... then the couples massage showed up for $50 off in the caper for a port day. I didnt keep my capers so I'm not sure which port day it was in, but it was in the caper and also a flyer that was included with the caper. I was pretty ticked off about that. If I hadn't asked and didnt know better well then I would be annoyed at myself, but since I specifically discussed it with the receptionist and she specifically assured me that they didnt give discounts on couples massage I was pretty ticked. It took several attempts for me to be able to talk to some one about it. I was told I could only speak to the manager and she was never 'there' when I went. I finally went on Thursday evening and explained the situation. She basically said that they normally don't give a discount but that the couples massage wasnt very booked and so they decided at the last minute late the night before?? Amazing how it made it in to the caper which had been distributed HOURS PRIOR to when she said they made the decision to discount it. She couldnt come up with any good explanation for that. She basically couldnt care less. She said since we already had the service there was nothing she could do. I pushed the issue a little more and she then said that obviously the receptionist had misunderstood what I asked when I asked about discounts on port days. She ended up saying "I will send you $60 in gift certificates for the spa". Well, later on when we got what she sent, what it actually was "$30 off any service of $149 or higher on the last day only", oen for each of us. Needless to say I didn't use them, lol.

 

SHOPPING ON BOARD - We had several experiences with shopping ON the ship. The first was that I was looking for a pair of diamond earrings and they had several in the shop so we wanted to take a look. The first thing that happened was that the price tags on the jewelry all has two prices "Suggested Retail Price" and "Our Retail Price"... the discounts that they advertise on the jewelry is off the SUGGESTED retail price to basically bring it down to the OUR retail price. I guess a lot of stores do that when they are having a sale, jack UP the price and then give you a discount to make you feel like your saving money. I don't like that practice and I find it to be really deceptive. Also, I found that the sales people didn't know anything about diamonds. Which is ok except for the fact that they are SELLING them. If they are going to be selling diamonds they really should have some one working there that is educated about diamonds. We dealt with two different sales people and also the assistant manager and none of them could answer even the most basic questions so we ended up passing on the earrings, not because the price wasn't decent or that we didnt like the earrings, but because of the attitudes of the staff who were only interested in ringing up the purchase and not answering questions about the product.

 

Also on the first night we purchased liquor. Two bottles of JW Blue, one bottle of JW Black and two bottles of Amarula(sp) which is similar to baileys etc. They had a rolling bag as a free gift with your purchase of $250 or higher. They showed us the bag but said our bag would be delivered with the liquor. A few days later we got a note that the Amarula was out of stock and that our money would be refunded. I called and spoke to the manager who ended up agreeing to give us one free bottle of Sheridans since we had purchased the JW Blue etc... he said they would deliver the Sheridans to us when the other stuff was delivered. Well, on the last day when the other stuff was delivered - no Sheridans, no bag, and no Amarula refund - AND they CHARGED us for the Sheridans. It took about 5 phone calls and three visits in person to the liquor store to get it all cleared up but we finally got the refund for the Amarula, the Sheridans, the free bottle of Sheridans and the bag. It was a huge hastle and I really have to wonder what would have happened if we wouldnt have pursued it.

 

The JW Blue was $119 per bottle on the ship, it was $99 in St. Martin. They said if you brought "written proof of the price" you could get a reduction, but of course no one would give us anything unless we BOUGHT it. We talked to the manager that night and he said he only needed a name and phone/address, it didnt have to say the price. So when we went to St. Thomas we did that but it was $115 in St. Thomas so we only ended up saving about $10...

 

The jewelry was also significantly cheaper on St. Martin, I would highly recommend jewelry shopping at least for diamonds in St. Martin. We went into about 15 stores ( I was looking for some thing very specific ). I was looking for 'past present future' three stone diamond earrings to match my necklace. I had basically given up when we went into DK Gems International in St. Martin. They didn't have the earrings but had the necklace, IDENTICAL to mine except the diamonds were just slightly smaller. He had ONLY TWO necklaces and they were a perfect match, so he made earrings out of them for me and they are perfect. He charged me $1,400 for 1.8 ct of very high clarity and color. They are beautiful. It would have cost me MORE than double in the US for those earrings. Also, we priced them in St. Thomas and we were quoted $2,800 and up for diamonds that were visibly low quality and were no where near the color/clarity of the ones we purchased in St. Martin. Also in St. Martin we purchased a Siera mens diamond ring. The ring couldn't be resized because of the layout of the diamonds. We paid in full for the ring and the ring was to be delivered to us directly from the designer by FedEx. We got the ring on Monday. We got appraisals for both pieces and were extremely happy with the service. Their website is http://www.dkgemsintl.com, the website doesnt do them justice tho. We found the sales people to be extremely knowledgeable. Actually interested in providing information about the diamonds and educating the purchaser etc.. although tthey were definately smooth salespeople, LOL, but they were friendly, polite, gave us plenty of ice cold soda to drink (also offered wine, champagne and rum). I can't say enough about these guys, I was VERY impressed. We dealt with Amit Malkani.

 

Normally we always book our excursions ahead of time and not through Carnival. This time things were so busy leading up to the cruise that we didnt plan anything. We decided in St. Martin to do the Little Divi Bay Beach Excursion at $38 per person. We didnt feel like just getting a taxi and goign exploring on our own. The $38 included transportation to and from the beach, beach chairs, lunch and two drinks of your choice. There were a multitude of problems which I wont go into unless some one has specific questions. We were very unhapy with the excursion and ended up leaving early in a taxi at our own expense. I also won't go into the *extremely* rude behavior of the woman at the shore excursion desk when I went to let them know what happened. I guess she hears a lot of complaints but she was completely inappropriate. They never contacted us about the complaint but on the last day we noticed a 10% refund on our folio...

 

SO, I think thats basically it... we did the "self assist" debarkation, which we have always done, difference being its now recognized and has a name, LOL. We were waiting in the lounge withour bags at 7:15, we were told it would be 7:30 to 8:30 approximately... we were the first group off... it started around 7:45-8, not sure the exact time, but we were off the ship and in our car by 8:30 and home by 9....

 

Since we went to st. Martin then St. Thomas, immigration was done on the morning of St. Thomas which was a hastle but turned out good because then we didnt have to do it on Sunday morning.

 

Customs was easy.. they said that they would search one in every three people but the whole customs process included two customs agents standing at the door taking the cards you had to fill out. There were no dogs and I didnt see any one getting taken aside to be checked. I dont think they even looked at our cards.

 

As some one else mentioned, we got into Puerto Rico around 2/2:30 instead of 5:30 which was great... We walked to the fort and had a great time playing around there before heading back to the ship for dinner...

 

I forgot to mention that we purchased a lot of art and went to ALL of the art auctions. The only bad thing was they do the preview at 12 and the auction is at 1 usually lasting two hours so basically covers the whole lunch period. The champange is free and on the first art auction they said they served 155 bottles of champange and only 160 people attended so on the other three auctions they stopped serving half way through. Also what we did was go to the auction and get our table and then one of us would go up and get food and bring it down so we could eat lunch rather than having to wait until 3 to get a bite when we had dinner at 5:45... we won two raffles and also purchased multiple pieces. We found the art auction staff to be friendly and helpful and always eager to answer questions etc.

 

Also I got my hair and makeup done for first formal night. The makeup looked great in the mirror at the spa but actually came out badly on the pictures, you could tell that the foundation wasnt blended properly and came out blotchy on some of the photos. That was my fault for not looking closely enough in the spa, but I probably wouldnt have them to my makeup again. Also I had my hair done in an up do and I was charged $30 for the clips they needed to do it. Also my fault because I should have asked how much the clips were before they did my hair, but I didnt think they would be so expensive. It cost me $120 for hair and makeup including the clips. I was happy with the updo except that she did barrel rolls so low in the back that you can't see anything in the photos. All the photos look like I have my hair in a pony tail, lol. Oh well.

 

I think I covered everything but if any one has a question feel free to ask... Sorry this was so long.. we had a decent cruise but frankly this is the ONLY cruise I have written a negative review for and this cruise left me in no hurry to go back.

[Deb&Bert]

I read your review. And had alot of the same thoughs.

We were on the Victory in January with a group of 30 family and friends.

 

This was our 5th Carnival Cruise and have already booked for the Glory in Jan. 2006.

 

We had lots of trouble's on the Victory. The main dinning room was just awful.

The waite staff was rotten. As the same as the other post.

 

I ran into a gentleman wearing a wife uniform who seemed to be in charge.

 

He asked me how the cruise was going. I never bitch while on a cruise.

I am on vaction and having a blast. How could anything be bad right?

 

I told me about the dinning room staff and he told me how sorry he was and that he would take care of it. What a laugh.

 

We had our head waiter roll his eye's atleast 4 times a night. It was just

nothing like I have ever seen before.

 

The funny thing is we had friends with us that have NEVER been on a cruise before and we brag all the time about the dinning room.. LOL

 

The dude in white told me that the Victory was the step child of workers.

This is the ship where the training and staff who needs more training are sent.

HEARD IT FOR MY OWN EARS!!!!!!

 

I love crusing, and yes we will keep on doing it. I love Carnival and would not even thing about changing.

 

Maybe the Victory needs to really keep in check with the Dinning room Head waiters..

[finoky]

Hey thanks for writing your review. We got off the Victory the day you got on. It's funny though cause we thought it was an excellent cruise for us. One of the best. But we do almost none of the things that you do! So we can noway compare except for the dining room service. You should have had our waiters. We've always had great ones but the two we had this time were the best ever. They were great at all the negative things you mentioned about yours. Well thanks again for writing your review. I enjoy reading all of them whether they mention negatives or not.

[jster]

Hello Everyone,

We just returned from the May 1-8 Victory cruise. Totally different experience however. Every night we ate in the Atlantic Dining room, the food was excellent!!! My Husband tried several different dishes, and raved about them all. I enjoyed every meal. Our waiters were so nice, Ariel and Anna. Our kids were sad to be leaving them. As a matter of fact, the Family next to us had 2 little girls who became very attached to Ariel and Anna. The one little girl couldn't stop hugging them good-bye. We all almost started crying.

 

The only complaint that I had was the tables down by the pool were not always cleaned up after people finished eating, so it was hard finding clean tables. This is very minor but, if I had to come up with any complaints that would be it.

 

Oh yeah, there was one portrait guy who was rude. No big deal, everyone has bad days. He wasn't one of the ones taking pictures (the guy we had was wonderful) he was one of the ones at the cashier.

 

Obviously everyone is going to have different experiences, and we all have different expectations. This was our first cruise, so I have nothing else to compare it to.

 

Just go and have fun!!! It's Vacation :)

[Top-Cat]

Legal Cat

 

Sorry you had so much bad luck. We had a great time on this cruise but we also did not do many of the same things, especially the Spa stuff. My DH did use the gym everyday.

 

We did buy art as well and rather enjoyed that part. We plan to do that again. I noticed that the champayne got better the more you had. And they did stop early after the first day. Guess we ran up quite a tab, LOL.

 

Our wait staff was very good. I was able to get Ceasar salad every night becuase that is my favoirte. By the third day the waiter already knew what I wanted in that area. We never ordered from the bar though.

 

Hope your next cruise is better. We almost took them up on couples massage and take advantage of the discount, but then didn't. If memory serves me, they offer a lot of specials towards the end. It would have been nice if they had issued you a credit though.

[sedbandmom]

I wore my SED t-shirt and hung out on the Panorama deck as we sailed away May 1. Didn't run into anyone from the foo foo girls.

 

We had a blast! We were seated at table 355 in the Pacific dining room, first seating. The food was great and I tried several dishes I had never eaten before. The first night we were kind of ignored by our waiter as we were seated in a booth and were alone. The two large tables near us received most of the attention. The next night one entire table had changed their dining time and our waiter apologized to us for the first night. Min and Arta were our servers and did a good job. There were a lot of empty seats in the dining room. We met some really nice people in the dining room at the open seating meals.

 

Eduardo was our cabin steward and we saw him all the time. He kept our champagne iced all week and took very good care of us. We had cabin 8439, aft balcony. While the balcony is deeper, it is also very exposed to other balconies and the Lido deck. Felt like being in a fishbowl. Woke up to large puddles every morning on the balcony from the night Lido deck washing. The crew's table and chair moving above our cabin was loud and did wake us up each morning.

 

The Victory looked great with her new carpets and bedding.

 

We spent the night before the cruise at the Holiday Inn Port hotel. It was clean and comfortable. Spent that night at Bayside and had one of the best times of my life. What a fun place!!!!

 

Legal Cat, did you decorate your cabin door with fishes and a paper hut?

 

Sandy

[KruznKel]

Thanks for all the great reviews we are going next March can't wait,, and all the reviews neg or pos do mean alot..

 

seabandmom,, We are staying at the same hotel (pre and post) and glad to hear more good reviews.. question for you did you commute from the airport I notice the cost is $20 for a taxi which is resonable,, and what about to port what was the cost$$

[sedbandmom]

Hi,

Yes, we took a taxi from the airport and I asked the price. The amount of $28 sticks in my mind. The second taxidriver told me the cost from hotel to port would be about $10. It actually came to about $7 before the tip (it was a metered taxi). You will be happy with the hotel. You HAVE to go across the street to Bayside. It was totally awesome!!!

Sandy

[KruznKel]

Thanks for that info seabandmom really appreciate it,,, since we are doing a pre and post stay at that hotel I am glad there will be things to keep us busy in walking distance!!

[LegalCat]

Yes that was our door... I had other stuff to put up but never really got into it like i usually do... we also had window clings all over the balcony window, lol... I brought back quite a few decorations unopened...

 

Thanks for every one that responded to my review... Im sorry that it was negative, but I feel like its good for people to hear others experiences even tho they may be good or bad so they can judge for themselves... I know very well that every ones perception is different and experiences are different so just take it with a grain of salt ;)

[*CruiseFan*]

Either way negative or positive I appreciate that you took the time to review. My boyfriend and I will be setting sail 5 weeks from right now and I just found out about it on Friday (it was a college graduation suprise) so I'm trying to find out as much about the Victory as possible.

 

Thank you very much LegalCat!

[LegalCat]

Congratulations on his graduation :) Im sure you guys will love it :)

[*CruiseFan*]

Haha, my graduation not his :) He suprised me with the cruise! Thank you though! I hope we love it :)